What are songs?

Famous quotes containing the word songs:

“Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.”
—Mahalia Jackson (1911–1972)

“On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me,

“Pipe a song about a Lamb”;
So I piped with merry chear.
“Piper pipe that song again”—
So I piped, he wept to hear.

“Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear”;
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)

“O women, kneeling by your altar-rails long hence,
When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer,
And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet air
And covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense;
Bend down and pray for all that sin I wove in song....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)